Return of national hunt game gets punters’ juices flowing
You can have your Frankels and Sea The Stars’ ‘til the cows come home, but the flat will simply never capture the public’s imagination in the way the jumping game does.
Cork last Sunday was very much a case in point, it was a bit like the first meeting for a long time of old friends.
There they were many of the chiselled faces, which had been missing through the summer, back on site and ready to see it through right to the Punchestown festival at the end of next April.
Plenty had come, of course, to see First Lieutenant, a Cheltenham hero over flights in March, in action in the novice chase.
He was beaten a nose by De Valira, but lost nothing in defeat. Mouse Morris’ six-year-old was always going to be vulnerable over two and a half miles on a flat track such as Cork.
He needs further, or at least a greater test of stamina than was afforded him at this course.
Will Mouse be tempted to take him to Cheltenham for the November meeting?
There is a three miles plus novice chase there and it would ideal practice for his long-term target, the SunAlliance in March.
Knowing the way Mouse has behaved in the past First Lieutenant would also run at Christmas and then not be seen again until the Cheltenham festival.
Best reception at Cork was given to the progressive Rebel Fitz, who strolled to victory in the two mile novice hurdle.
Those who know the horse well would not be tempted into a wager until they saw him in the parade ring.
But he was as dry as a bone walking around and heading out onto the track, in contrast to other occasions in the past, and if you were going to have a bet then it was clearly time to skip rapidly in the direction of the layers.
Imagine one’s surprise when he arrived up past the stands, with a circuit to cover, to note that he was again rather lathered.
But, I think, we have to accept that it is just him and it certainly doesn’t seem to make any great difference to the horse.
Rebel Fitz is trained by Michael Winters and, together with regular rider Davy Russell, they have become a popular team with southern punters in particular.
The fact that punters’ pockets are usually all the more healthy when Rebel Fitz runs, is clearly a factor, I suppose.
But the real point is that horses like First Lieutenant and Rebel Fitz just get the juices of punters flowing and that’s why Cork on Sunday was a lively spot with, hopefully, better to come.
Why did Turf Club hitch wagon to BHA muppets?
THAT was some interview Christophe Soumillon gave to Mike Cattermole on At The Races last Saturday - it was riveting.
Soumillon had earlier learned he was to forfeit his share of the prize money, he got it back yesterday, for using his whip six times inside the final furlong, after given Cirrus Des Aigles a fine ride to beat So You Think in the Champion Stakes at Ascot.
The amount involved was just short of £53,000, which was so out of proportion to the “crime’’ committed as to be almost laughable.
The whip debate has become rather tedious at this stage, but the entire affair really was a cock-up of cock-ups on the part of the British Horseracing Authority.
Soumillon brilliantly summed it up when he said he was “embarrassed for British racing.’’ It was a sentiment with which most would readily identify.
And one or two other observations.
We said here some weeks ago that it was surprising how quickly so many in the industry immediately got behind the new BHA whip rules, including Richard Hughes, Tony McCoy and Frankie Dettori.
But as well as the jockeys, it was a trifle amazing how so many of the British press were falling over themselves to get on board.
There has been a savage amount of rowing back of late and some of those most in favour of the rules originally have become its biggest critics.
And then there was the reaction of the Turf Club, who acted with indecent haste to get a press release out telling us they were setting up a sub-committee to examine the whip rules in Ireland.
Why did they feel the need to hitch their wagon, however tentatively, to BHA muppets, who hardly know their arse from their elbow?
There is no great clamour to amend the whip rules in this country, so why poke a sleeping bear?
Hopefully, this is one sub-committee which will never feel the need to raise its collective head above the parapet.
